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Fried Pickerel

Fried pickerel is a fish dish prepared by dredging in flour and frying in lard or dripping, then garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Pickerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the fish, then wipe it carefully inside and out.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour all over the outside.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the fish in lard or dripping until it is a nice brown, but not crisp.

  2. Drain off the fat and place the fish on a hot dish, with the head of one fish to the tail of the other.

  3. Garnish with curled parsley and quartered lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pickerel fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, flaky interior once fried.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown evenly in the hot fat.
Lard or dripping
Conducts heat to the fish and browns its coating, adding richness to the flavor.

The step that matters

Fry until nicely brown but not crisp. Hot fat browns the flour coating through Maillard reactions, but overcooking dries the fish and pushes the coating toward hard crispness. Watching the color and draining promptly keeps the flesh moist.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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